Man who made 'ransom call' to Najeeb Ahmed's relatives interrogated by police

New Delhi: A man, who was arrested for allegedly making a ransom call to missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed's relatives demanding Rs 20 lakh for his release, was interrogated by police at length on Sunday.

Even though Najeeb's family had on Saturday denied receiving any ransom call, the missing JNU student's cousin Sadaf Musharraf on Sunday claimed that her father had indeed received such a call around 15 January and had informed police about it.

Representational image. Reuters

The accused Shameem (19) had allegedly committed a murder when he was under 18 and spent five months in a juvenile home, said a senior police officer.

Even though he was giving different names, police managed to identify him and have seized one mobile phone and a SIM card which he allegedly used to make the ransom call, he said.

"He had used other numbers also to make the phone calls and police is trying it find out from where he procured the SIM cards."

"It is also being probed whether he was just making the calls for earning easy money or there was some ulterior motive," said the officer.

Shameem was arrested on Saturday from Maharajganj in Uttar Pradesh and was brought to Delhi on Sunday and put through sustained interrogation by Crime Branch sleuths.

"We receive a lot of calls — some sympathising with us and some troubling us like these ones. There are some calls where people even ask us to search for his body. We inform police about each and every call we receive and they decide which call they have to investigate," Najeeb's cousin said.

Sadaf said that they try and attend every call and in case they miss a call, they call back because they don't know which call might be "from Najeeb" or "a call that might lead them to Najeeb".

Meanwhile, six students who were served notices seeking their consent for polygraph test, have still not agreed to it.

Najeeb's roommate, Mohd Qasim, has also not given his consent for the lie-detector test despite agreeing to it earlier.

Last year, in November, a guard at JNU's Mahi Mandavi Hostel where Najeeb was staying had received a letter which claimed that the missing student was being held captive in Aligarh. However, on investigation, the letter was found to be bogus.

Ahmed, an MSc Biotechnology student, went missing on 15 October after a scuffle allegedly with ABVP affiliated students at his hostel on the JNU campus. A reward of Rs 10 lakh has been announced by Delhi Police on any information about him.